Scott Nortman has spent his career building robots, from spacecraft that fly in formation to surgical systems that help doctors operate. The one closest to home is a bedside robot built to solve a problem he watched in his own family: a CPAP mask his father-in-law tore off in his sleep every single night.

In this episode of The Pitch Room, Scott traces the full arc. From a kid who took apart every camera, VCR, and circuit board he could get his hands on, to the Advanced Technology Center at Lockheed Martin, to orthopedic surgical robotics at Mako, to founding his own company, Restful Robotics. He gets honest about the part most founder stories skip: what it actually takes to go from engineer to salesman, why raising friends-and-family money is not the same as closing a VC, and what he learned pitching a vision a few years before the market was ready for it.

In this episode:

• The first-week idea that became a patent years later, and why every engineer should keep an invention notebook
• How formation-flying spacecraft and drone light shows run on the exact same technology
• The real reason most CPAP patients quit, and the robot Scott built to fix it
• Going from the engineer in the room to the founder who has to sell the vision
• Why he says everything he was pitching back in 2020 actually came true
• His one piece of advice for anyone breaking into the field today

Real conversations with the people actually building things, minus the highlight reel. Follow The Pitch Room on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, and YouTube so you don't miss what's next.

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